{"id":12932,"date":"2014-06-04T00:07:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T07:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12932"},"modified":"2014-06-04T00:07:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T07:07:07","slug":"open-thread642014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/04\/open-thread642014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–6\/4\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, when I shall be leaving for prison volunteer training.  I will return on Friday afternoon,  I\u2019m taking my notebook, but I don\u2019t know how much I shall be able to do, while there.  It will probably be little more than Personal Updates, if that.  Please keep the Republicans at bay, while I\u2019m gone.  Day 44.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s took me 2:52 (average 4:42).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>Whenever I hear people condemn those who are financially less fortunate than themselves, I tend to tune them out (yes, sometimes I’m RUDE). A better idea would be to share the information from this infographic, because 1) it\u2019s more tactful than what I usually do and 2) it might help some folks be a little more compassionate.<\/p>\n

\"0604Poverty\"<\/p>\n

The loss of IQ and mental illness factors help explain why some poor people vote Republican.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Fox News has fallen and it can’t get up<\/strong>. Ratings for the month of May 2014, have just been published, and the numbers are devastating for Fox News<\/a>. While still occupying the top slot among the cable news networks, Fox saw about a quarter of its audience dissolve across every demographic group and time period.<\/p>\n

Every Fox program in primetime dropped by double-digits, with Bill O’Reilly taking the deepest dive. Sean Hannity posted some of his lowest numbers ever in his new 10:00 pm time slot. And Megyn Kelly’s new, and highly anticipated, primetime show failed to improve on the ratings performance of her predecessor.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Fox was not the only network to see declines. In fact, CNN had an even larger dip. The news was much better for MSNBC<\/a> who was down the least of all the cable news networks. They lost a relatively insignificant five percent of total viewers, but actually saw increases for Morning Joe, and for Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow in primetime.<\/p>\n

For Fox to post numbers that they haven’t seen since August of 2001 (before 9\/11) is a painful blow to both their reputation and their bank account. But they have even bigger problems. The viewers that do tune in to Fox are significantly older<\/a> than viewers of their competitors. Fox News has always had the oldest skewing audience in cable news. With a median age of 68.8 years, Fox’s audience is over six years older than either CNN or MSNBC. It’s even worse for their top rated program (O’Reilly) who’s average viewer is over 72 years old. And their Great Blonde Hope (Kelly), who was specifically brought in to draw younger viewers, also exceeded Fox’s average with her typical viewer voyeur being over 70.<\/p>\n

You can sum up my response in two words. The first is "Wooo". Can you guess the second? \ud83d\ude09<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider<\/a> challenges from Democratic lawmakers who say the Alabama Legislature packed minority voters into a few districts, diluting their voting power.<\/p>\n

In another case from Alabama last year, the Supreme Court effectively struck down<\/a> Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which has required permission from the federal authorities before states may change their voting procedures.<\/p>\n

This is one to watch. Considering the record of the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD), I’m not expecting an outcome that agrees with our Constitution.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"0604Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, when I shall be leaving for prison volunteer training.  I will return on Friday afternoon,  I\u2019m taking my notebook, but I don\u2019t know how much I shall be able to do, while there.  It will probably be little more than Personal Updates, if that.  Please keep the Republicans at bay, while […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}